1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to systems for providing products to customers. More specifically, the present invention concerns a system to provide a product to a customer based on a game outcome.
2. Description of the Related Art
Retailers experiment with many types of systems designed to attract customers away from other retailers. Some of these systems attempt to attract customers by injecting excitement into a retail shopping experience.
Sweepstakes are one such system. A retailer conducts a sweepstakes by receiving entries from customers at a retail store, by selecting one or more entries from the received entries and by awarding predetermined prizes to customers from whom the selected entries were received. Accordingly, a sweepstakes is intended to motivate a customer to visit the retail store by presenting a possibility of winning a prize. However, the ability of a sweepstakes to influence a customer's choice of retail stores is limited because the predetermined prizes are often products in which the customer has little particular interest and because a probability of winning a desirable prize in a sweepstakes open to the public is often perceived to be extremely low. As a result, retailers often conclude that the limited ability of a sweepstakes to attract customers is outweighed by a cost of the awarded prizes.
Other systems which attempt to provide excitement, such as that described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,269,521 to Rossides, allow customers to gamble for products. According to U.S. Pat. No. 5,269,521, a customer desiring to obtain a commodity submits a wager to participate in a game of chance in which a winning outcome results in an award of the commodity to the customer and a losing outcome results in a loss of the wager. However, customers in a shopping environment are usually unwilling to risk losing the payment without receiving any benefit in return. Accordingly, gambling-based systems are limited in their attractiveness to retail customers. Moreover, these systems invoke gambling laws and regulations which present financial and administrative burdens that complicate a retailer's business to an extent outweighing any additional revenues resulting from the systems.
Therefore, what is needed is a system for injecting excitement into a shopping experience which is more attractive to customers than conventional systems, is not necessarily gambling, and which is also more profitable and less cumbersome to retailers.